It would appear likely that the pre-1 July rush of applications has added around 9,000 applications (about 20 to 21,000 persons) to our pipeline. We are still entering cases on to our system. This moves our on-hand caseload from being the equivalent of 4 to 5 months processing work, to around 9 months of work.
Clearly this has potentially serious implications for service standards. This is especially so for cases in our pipeline. The priority offered to 'decision ready' applications already meant that pipeline cases actually were taking more than 4 to 5 months to allocate to case officers. A 9 month pipeline therefore has potentially significant issues for pipeline cases.
At the same time we have a mass of decision ready applications on-hand. Up until now we have been able to balance their allocation with the allocation of cases from our pipeline. At the moment we do not have enough case officers to allocate all decision ready applications in the previously nominated timeframes. In fact it is likely that it will take several months before they are all allocated. At the same time if we only processed decision ready applications this would be a further problem for the timeframes associated with allocating pipeline cases.
At the moment we are working on trying to strike a balance.
We hope to shortly again to be in a position to include on our mailbox auto response the dates of lodgement we are up to with allocating cases from our pipeline